Theft at the Public Till
of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation at the deterioration of life around you. Walk down any residential street in an American small town and you will see the ghastly effects of the home improvement industry. The object of the industry is not really to improve houses but to sell vast quantities of merchandise. It accomplishes this by persuading homeowners that they can beautify and add value to their houses and save money by doing the work themselves. This is appealing in theory, but in practice it is a joke, because most homeowners are not competent building contractors. They may be good fathers and mothers, able optometrists, winning Little League coaches, and loyal friends, but they are apt to be bungling carpenters. Carpentry is an exacting set of skills. Even at the professional level it has been debased as a consequence of mass production, and the number of incompetent building contractors is disturbing. At the amateur level, it is worse. In fact, the home improvement industry actively promotes the idea that skill is not important. All that matters is buying the right tools and building materials. The tools will do the work, and the materials-such as factory-made drop-ceiling kits- will eliminate thinking. All the homeowner need do is lay out some money at the building supply store, and then take the stuff home Saturday morn- ing. The job itself is a snap. All this is based on two contemporary myths: (1) the idea that shopping is a substitute for design, and (2) the idea that it's possible to get something for nothing, in this case skillful work without skill. The result, of course, is a lot of botched jobs. Worse, when one clod on Elm Street rebuilds his front steps ineptly, his neighbors have to suffer the consequences too, for they have to see his bad work every time they walk- out of the house. One of the reasons that we value work and leisure that permit us to think and act creatively and meet challenging standards of achievement is that these characteristics of our activities feed into another thing we value control. We want to be autonomous. We went to be able to make our own decisions, to be able to determine our own destinies, to be responsible for
187
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online